Are you on the hunt for some light reading this week? What came from this huge collaborative effort is a massive 25 page document with nearly 130 questions from fans of City of Heroes from all over the world. Not all of them could be answered, finding the right developer to answer certain questions just couldn’t happen in time. But most of them have answers, sometimes by several developers who may have different views on the answers.

Reactions from the community have been low key, everyone agrees that six months since the closure it has stirred those strong emotions once again. And I have to admit they stirred a few in me. I didn’t submit any questions this time around, though my partner in crime fighting, Ardua submitted quite a few. For me it wasn’t so much the questions or the answers that made me sad for ParagonCity all over again. It was seeing so many familiar global names. My friends who have scattered across the internet in the six months. Even just familiar faces who I never really played with but I would see everywhere.

I’ll finish below with a few of what I think are the best questions and answers. I’d like to thank Hosun, Tim, Sean, John, Vince, Keetsie, Sean Dornan-Fish, and Matt Miller on behalf of the entire City of Heroes community. This was an amazingly awesome endeavor and means more to us than you know. Thank you, and we hope we see you again soon.

Q) What was the deal with Radio/Television? Were they Dimensionless? I thought they were just the mad delusions of my villains, but as Television was the “villain” of Mako week I am wondering if there was more back story/plans with them. (Randy Jarvis)

A) They were not Dimensionless, they were (most likely) evil spirits of the netherworld possessing various inanimate objects, iirc (Matt)

Q) Since Arbiter Sands had hooked up with Mynx romantically were we ever going to see him switch sides and become a hero?

A) It was a possibility that we considered but had nothing set in stone. At the time I had planned on exploring deeper into the Valentine’s Day themes in future Valentine’s Day Tips. (John)

Q) What was going to be the plan for the final incarnate powers and trials? (@Sarrona)

A) There was no “final”, once Omega slot was reached that would be the new “Alpha” slot and 10 more Incarnate levels would appear above it. Getting the first 10 Incarnate powers would have been trivialized so the “new grind” would be the Omega-base tree. And then there was a tree after that, and one after that, etc. (Matt)

Q) What was Mender Tesseract? We’re told she’s from the future and that she’s supposed to be crazy powerful in her own time, but we know little about what she actually was or her powers.

A) Mender Tesseract is ex-Battalion. As Lord Nemesis traveled back in time, he had to make various “stops” to upload into a new body (this is how he got around the whole temporal tether rule). During one of these stops, he convinced the crazy powerful Tesseract that Battalion was bad and doomed to fail, and she should join the winning side when she had the chance. Pulling her out of the Battalion equation was a key part of weakening them to the point where they could be destroyed in the future, should Ouroboros fail at stopping them in the past. In other words “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey… stuff.” (Matt)

Q) Additionally, what ever became of the rumored Coralax EAT? Since EATs always had fairly large plots centered around them, (more or less,) did that thought process go far enough to have a story developed for it? (@Mako)

A) The large plots is actually one of the things that prevented us from introducing more EATs. We had a ton of ideas, but the sticking point was always a lack of time necessary to both do the powers and the content associated with the EAT that would meet player expectation. I remember working on ideas for a Circle of Thorns PEAT as well as a Devoured PEAT. (John)

B) EAT’s in general were a PITA (pain in the arse) as they required a lot of mission content to be created for them, and only the EAT’s could run that content. I think it was a precedent set by HEAT’s that we ended up following for VEAT’s. There was also a Praetorian EAT that was going to be a redeemed Clockwork. A lot of design and animation for the EAT’s were done, but they still needed art and content. Eventually we were thinking of introducing Purchasable Archetypes, which had no story content tied to them. (Hosun)

Q) Carnival of Light mask. Carnival of Shadows mask. What could have happened if they’d met? Power struggle/carnie civil war, live and let live, ? (Memphis Bill)

A) Hot Vanessa DeVore on Vanessa DeVore action (John)

A) The Carnival of Twilight would have all been insufferable vampire fiction fans. (Tim)

Q) Kheldian players successfully defeated Arakhn, Requiem and the world take over plot. Given that this is a multi-stellar war fought across vast distances and multiple races, what incentive was there for joined Peacebringers to stay joined and on Earth? (@Ardua)

A) Memphis BBQ. Nothing like it in the entire universe. (Matt)

B) In the Incarnate speculation talk we proposed that “beings who were contributing to the Well’s gestalt” – ie a way to include non-humans, artificials, mystic entities etc who called Earth “home” in some way would find themselves being drawn to it. This was the lore figleaf for why players would stay in areas around Earth, for one. (Tim)

Q) Crey Corporation, what were their big plans? Countess Crey’s backstory had this “fallen hero” angle to it, so were there ever plans to explore more of her larger schemes?

A) Their ultimate plan was to take over the world ala Apple, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, only slightly more nefariously. (Matt)

A) I wanted Manticore and Julianne to hook up. I also had this notion that she’d become an Incarnate and rival the other heavy hitters in the 50+ realm. (Tim)